Regular reader Ted Fries sent along this commentary on the recent atrocity in Jacksonville, Florida.

Ms. Amy Swearer is a bright young voice in the gun owners’ civil rights movement.  I haven’t heard the reality of this matter explained better.

19 COMMENTS

  4. I have heard it said that if you want hide something put it in plain sight. Could it be that the truth in this article is so prominently displayed in historical and daily perspective that many in our modern society are unable to see it?

  5. Thanks Mas for the chance to read this very enlightening commentary! Now the progressive socialists will have to no doubt visit a dentist to get treatment for the grinding of their teeth.

  7. After reading the article, she states the obvious. What I don’t understand is the fact that there are people out there that don’t think evil exists.

  9. That’s great writing. Looks like the formula is, facts + clear wording + appropriate emotion + truth = great writing.

  10. As I have said before – Why aren’t the owners of ‘gun free zones’ held legally responsible for the safety and lives of anyone entering the facility ?
    I don’t care if it’s a shopping mall, the Post Office, a school, a private business. If they believe it should be a ‘gun free zone’ they MUST provide on-site protection and be specifically insured to cover all injury or death that occurs on their site – or face prison for negligence.

    • As a pharmacist working retail for a major chain, I told my wife to sue if I was killed on the job given their anti gun stance for employees. I had people arrested for bad narcotics Rx and attempted robbery. I had an associate pistol whipped during a robbery and a couple so traumatized they were out of work for a period of time.

      The manager I talked with (a young lady near half my age) said why carry a gun? Just give them what they want, we have insurance. I said sometimes it doesn’t work that way & people die. (Note: 6 mo or a year later 4 guys were arrested when a girlfriend notified the police … they were planning a closing time robbery: take the drugs, cash & video recordings, kill the witnesses. Thankfully, now the video is recorded live off site & cannot be destroyed short of a hack into the system)

  11. Ms. Swearer’s commentary represents an excellent example of a “commonsense” attitude toward firearms and the purpose of the 2nd Amendment.

    Unfortunately, when it comes to the leftist worldview, the old saying that “Commonsense is not so Common” holds true. The leftist worldview is based upon the false belief in the goodness of human nature. In order to sustain this belief system, a leftist shifts all blame for the world’s problems from humans (and human nature) and places the blame, instead, upon social and environmental factors.

    Therefore, the concept that one would need to arm oneself against evil humans is alien to a leftist. In the leftist world, there are no evil humans. The term “evil human” is an oxymoron. Rather, there are only humans that have been twisted and perverted into doing evil acts by external social and environmental forces beyond their control.

    A leftist MUST place the blame for violence somewhere other than at the feet of the individual who commits it. In America today, the Left sees violence as rooted in the exterior forces of poverty, racism, discrimination and (as a prime culprit) the “easy availability” of “assault weapons” that are “only good for killing people”.

    Thus, under the false worldview of the Left, commonsense would dictate that the population be disarmed (except for the security forces under the control of the leftist elites, of course) so that the population would not be influenced to perform violence anymore. The leftists understand, full well, that a disarmed population can be “controlled”. A controlled population can be forced to march into the leftist’s utopia. Indeed, to a leftist, a controlled population (which ensures their perpetual power) IS UTOPIA (for the leftist elites anyway!).

    Therefore, a leftist would read Ms. Swearer’s commentary and classify it as “nonsense” rather than as “commonsense”. “Commonsense” to a leftist means “Commonsense Gun Controls”.

    So, while Ms. Swearer’s commentary is excellent, I am afraid that it represents nothing more than “preaching to the choir”. People who already support the 2nd Amendment will read it and say “Amen”. Most leftists won’t bother to read it at all and, even if they do, it will make no more impression on their minds than “water on a duck’s back”. It will be discarded immediately as just more “Alt-Right Nonsense”.

    Our enemy is beyond persuasion. They are beyond reason. They cannot be induced to bargain. They are fanatics. Our only hope is to defeat them in election after election after election. What they desire most in this world is political power. If we can take the political power away from them and keep it away from them, then they will wither and die like a weed that is deprived of water.

    That is the only way to defeat them. To starve them of political power, to wither them and, by this method, kill them off like the pernicious weeds that they are.

    • We’ll never change the minds of the hard core anti-gunners. What we can do is spread logic like Ms. Swearer’s to the vast number of people between the two poles of this very polarized debate.

      • Mas – you are correct. The debate about firearm ownership is highly polarized. However, you must realize that it is left-wing ideology that creates this polarization. A human armed with a firearm forms a “weapon system”. This system is far more powerful then either the human or the firearm by itself. When this weapon system is abused and used for evil, who is to blame? For it is only by assigning blame that a political response can be envisioned and initiated.

        Since the weapon system is binary (composed of only two parts), either the human or the firearm must be blamed. If one blames the human, then the resulting policies are the one’s advocated by the NRA such as strict punishment for the criminal misuse of firearms, better mental healthcare, better security at public venues, better firearms training and education, etc.

        A leftist cannot blame the human because of his ideological worldview. His only choice is to blame the firearm. The result is a mindset that the only solution is gradually increasing gun controls until effective firearms prohibition is achieved. The is no middle ground between these views. The binary composition of the weapon system can only give rise to completely polarized policy views.

        To illustrate the way left-wing ideology works, let me provide a quote from President Lyndon B. Johnson. LBJ (along with FDR and President Obama) was one of the most left-wing presidents to live in the last 100 years. The following quote is an excerpt from a National speech that he gave on July 27, 1967:

        “The only genuine, long-range solution for what has happened lies in an attack– mounted at every level–upon the conditions that breed despair and violence. All of us know what those conditions are: ignorance, discrimination, slums, poverty, disease, not enough jobs. We should attack these conditions-not because we are frightened by conflict, but because we are fired by conscience. We should attack them because there is simply no other way to achieve a decent and orderly society in America.

        In the past 3 1/2 years, we have directed the greatest governmental effort in all of our American history at these ancient enemies. The roll call of those laws reveals the depth of our concern: the Model Cities Act, the Voters Rights Act, the Civil Rights Acts, the Rent Supplement Act, Medicare and Medicaid, the 24 educational bills, Head Start, the Job Corps, the Neighborhood Youth Corps, the Teacher Corps, manpower development and training. And many, many more acts too numerous to mention on television tonight.

        We will continue to press for laws which would protect our citizens from violence, like the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act now under consideration in the Congress, and the Gun Control Act.”

        The above excerpt is a PERFECT expression of left-wing ideology. It does the following:

        1) It starts with the left-wing assumption that all humans are inherently good. It assumes that no human would ever give in to despair or use violence of their own volition.
        2) It places the blame for despair and violence upon certain external social and environmental conditions. LBJ provides a laundry list of these conditions starting with ignorance and ending upon with “not enough jobs”.
        3) He then announces that the “only genuine, long-range solution” is to implement the left-wing ideological platform by using Big Government and Big Government Programs to “attack” these negative social and environmental conditions.
        4) He promises that a brave and successful attack on these conditions will bring about the left-wing utopia which he defines as a “decent and orderly society in America”.
        5) He ends up by giving another laundry list. This one is a list of Big Government Programs all designed to carry out the left-wing “attack” upon the negative “conditions” he previously identified. This list begins with the Model Cities Act, proceed through Medicare and Medicaid, and (of course) ends up with the Gun Control Act of 1968.

        So, what was the result of LBJ’s “Great Society” programs? Crime spiraled out-of-control in the 1970’s. The welfare programs that he initiated caused whole generations to become dependent upon government handouts, the stabilizing structure of the family unit has been severely damaged, and (during the 1970’s and early 1980’s) the economy tanked with sky-high inflation and interest rates. The bitter fruits of LBJ’s left-wing ideological policies were harvested and, to some extent, are still being harvested today.

        Left-wing ideology is false and has a consistent and worldwide history of failure. The economic failures of communism and socialism ought to be better known then they are. After all, the failure in Venezuela is very recent. The failures of leftist “Prohibition” policies such as the Prohibition of Alcohol and the War on Drugs are also evident. In the case of the War on Drug, Conservative joined in and share some of the blame for the failures.

        Yet, despite an unbroken history of disastrous failures, many people still flock to embrace left-wing ideals. They do so because left-wing ideology is a “Siren Song”. It plays music and song that is so sweet to the ear. People WANT to believe in the innate goodness of our fellow man. People WANT to be able to shift the blame for evil away from the self and direct it outward to external social factors. People WANT to believe that the world can be made better. That it can be turned into a utopia by means of directed government efforts.

        However, the “Siren Song” of left-wing ideology leads only to shipwreck and death. The song is a deceit. The ideology is a lie. The road to Hell is truly paved with good intentions.

  12. There’s one problem with this sort of reasoning.

    I bet that there are tens of thousands of people who fit this description who never harm anyone. Sure, all of the mass shooters share these traits in common, but there are lots of people who have those traits who would never pick up a gun to harm another person.

    The reality that few want to face is that you can’t stop crazy people from doing crazy stuff unless you want to violate a whole litany of personal liberties.

    The best solution is to be prepared to avoid potential situations, and to deal with them if you find yourself in the middle of one.

    • Some truth there Alison. Kinda like saying gun owners are bad because, look, someone otherwise lawful gun owner did something bad. He was lawful. Until he wasn’t.

    • This article hits so many points square-on to my thinking. Thank you Amy!
      As a recently acquired CCW holder I continue to see the growing reasons for tipping the scale away from favoring the bad apples in society.
      Since carrying, the only place I’ve been restricted from entering while armed has been Arlington Cemetery ..go figure.

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